vinho verde

Monverde Wine Experience Hotel has been a long time affair of mine ever since I visited it for the first time, in 2016. Quite unsurprisingly, this stunning and picturesque wine hotel was the regional winner of the “Sustainable Wine Tourism Practices” category of the Best Of Wine Tourism 2018 awards, following on from winning the “Accommodation” category in 2017.

There are never enough excuses to pay a visit to the enchanted Douro Valley, one of the most prominent wine regions in the world. Therefore I was very glad to accept the invitation of CoolTour Oporto, the regional winner of the “Wine Tourism Services” category of the Best of Wine Tourism 2018 awards, to go on a group guided tour to the Douro Valley.

Taking advantage of the holiday season, we decided to visit Ponte de Lima, to learn a little more about the Vinhos Verdes region, demarcated on 18 September 1908, which occupies the area known as Entre-Douro-e-Minho, the largest Portuguese demarcated region, in terms of surface area, and one of the largest in Europe. And there is no better place to learn about this region than the Centro de Interpretação e Promoção do Vinho Verde -CIPVV (Centre for Interpretation and Promotion of Vinho Verde).

This year CIPVV won the regional prize in the category of Art and Culture of the Best Of Wine Tourism awards from the Great Wine Capitals.

In the middle of the building, in an inner courtyard of a farm cleverly transformed into a hotel by architect Fernando Coelho, something immediately caught my eye. On the roof, covered with a huge skylight which lit the common spaces magnificently, hung an enigmatic sculpture in a chaotic scene that was impossible to ignore...